“This started as a grassroots movement. It happened without foreign investment, without government aid. It happened against the odds.” — Filmmaker Franco Sacchi on Nollywood, Nigeria’s $250M/year industry “There’s no such thing as African science. There’s no such thing as American science. Science is science.” — Entrepreneur Moses Makayoto “The US today could not have […]
The after-lunch and evening sessions, “Connecting the Continent” and “The Campfire,” were about communication and forming bonds. Mweshi rounds up the early afternoon session, starting with Héctor Ruiz, the chair of AMD, speaking on AMD’s 50×15 initiative: AMD’s 50×15 initiative is a business venture and not a charity, it’s focused on simple, accessible, and human-centric […]
Beijing-based blogger Jennifer Brea is one of 100 Fellows attending TEDGlobal. She’s the Francophonia editor for Global Voices, and a prolific and powerful blogger about Africa. I love what she wrote about rethinking media coverage of Africa. Just an excerpt below. Read the full post here. The first day’s speakers–Euvin Naidoo, Andrew Mwenda, Carol Pineau, […]
TEDGlobal’s attending bloggers offer great roundups of the two morning sessions, called “Tales of Invention” and “Health and Heroism.” Africa abounds in creative energy and innovation, a point made yesterday by Kwabena Boahen and elaborated today by two panels of inventors and health workers. As always, Ethan Zuckerman has the speaker-by-speaker accounts. Mweshi writes about […]
At the conference midway point, a few images from the TEDGlobal stage … Mali-born, Paris-based chanteuse Rokia Traore opens the conference with a traditional Griot song of welcome. TED Curator Chris Anderson and TEDGlobal Program Director Emeka Okafor co-host the show from the TED stage. Technorati tags: tedglobal2007 Technorati Profile
Tuesday, June 5, from around the blogs: Erik Hertsman at White African reports: Google has hired its first sub-Saharan Africa employee! Joseph Mucheru has been named the new site lead for Google Kenya. This was whispered to be happening, but at today’s Google lunch at TEDGlobal the position was made official by Francoise Brougher, Director […]
On the first day of the conference, the discussion between Andrew Mwenda and Bono electrified the audience and those following the conference via blogs. Here’s what bloggers both inside and outside the conference had to say: Felix Salmon’s Market Movers blog for Portfolio.com gives an overview: … the conference kicked off with [William] Easterly-by-proxy Andrew […]
Those of you who’ve attended TED in Monterey know that when you hear the Elephant March from Aïda, it means the doors for the Main Hall have opened, and it’s time to scramble for a seat. (Over the years, this becomes a Pavlovian response; a single bar of that striding score touches off the rush […]
In the months before each TED, we ask speakers to fill in a short, casual questionnaire for the program guide, answering questions like “Who are your heroes?” and “Family apart, what are you most proud of?” Most speakers write a sentence or two for each. But for TEDGlobal 2007, iconoclastic Ghanaian economist George Ayittey took […]
Marine biologist Tierney Thys asks the audience to step into the open ocean for a visit to the world of the Mola mola, or giant ocean sunfish. Basking, eating jellyfish, and getting massages, this behemoth offers clues to life in the open ocean — which accounts for 90 percent of the living space on this […]
Nora York — an adventurous jazz singer and genre-crossing performance artist — lit up the stage at last year’s TED salon with her stunning original song, “What I Want” (watch it now on TED.com). She returns to the New York stage this week with STACKED! : a retrospective evening of her hybrid and recombinant musical […]
Architect David Rockwell joined forces with Chee Perlman and Kevin Kelly (TEDizens, all) in San Francisco last night, to celebrate Spectacle, the gorgeous book he created with Bruce Mau, exploring the phenomenon of public performance. Photos by Robert Leslie.
One of the greatest things about TED is the opportunity to get acquainted with people who are already part of your life, even if you don’t know them personally. Be it hearing them in a speech, meeting them in the audience, or catching them in a TEDTalks video, TED gives us all a chance to […]
The theme for the TED 2008 conference was recently announced — it is "The Big Questions." A worthy theme for TED, indeed, but not one I am yet prepared to ponder. Rather, as TED 2007 is literally around the corner, I find myself much more engaged in contemplating next week’s theme — "Icons. Geniuses. Mavericks." […]
Worth a read: Fascinating Op/Ed piece in today’s Times by Carolyn Porco on the brightening future for human space travel, which has been faltering since the Nixon era. TED2006 speaker, Burt Rutan, had a lot to say about this in his TED talk, which provocatively began: “Houston, we have a problem. We’re entering a second […]
Along the social absorption route, there is always a point where complex issues and inconvenient messages percolate into the pop-culture sphere and start being considered self-evident, possibly triggering changes in behavior and other individual or collective responses. For the climate crisis that point may be nearing. It may even have a precise date: this year’s […]